Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

Acting on information from Holt, a confidential informant (CI) who had purchased oxycodone from Barnes during three recent controlled buys in coordination with law enforcement, federal agents executed a search warrant on Barnes’s trailer home in rural Eastern Tennessee. They found roughly 300 pills in the trailer, mostly in prescription bottles bearing Barnes’s name, and some in bottles prescribed to other individuals, plus at least $1700 in cash—including marked bills from the CI’s controlled buys—and ammunition and firearms. Two guns were tucked under the corners of a mattress in the living room where Barnes slept and where he was seated when agents arrived. A jury convicted Barnes of drug trafficking and firearms offenses including, possession with intent to distribute oxycodone, 21 U.S.C. 841(a)(1) and (b)(1)(C) and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime, 18 U.S.C. 924(c). The Sixth Circuit​ affirmed rejecting claims that insufficient evidence supported the Section 924(c) conviction, that the district court wrongly admitted evidence of calls recorded while he was in jail with respect to his possession with intent to distribute conviction, and that the district court improperly considered a 1998 drug conviction when determining Barnes’s guidelines sentencing range. View "United States v. Barnes" on Justia Law

Pawlak sold firearms to an undercover officer on four occasions. He pled guilty to four counts of possessing a firearm as a felon, 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(1). The court calculated a base offense level of 26 (U.S.S.G. 2K2.1(a)(1)) because the offenses involved a “semiautomatic firearm that is capable of accepting a large capacity magazine,” and Pawlak had two prior “felony convictions of either a crime of violence or a controlled substance offense.” One of Pawlak’s qualifying convictions was an Ohio third-degree burglary offense. Absent that conviction, his base level would have been 22. The court added two levels because Pawlak possessed six firearms and applied a four-level enhancement for trafficking in firearms. After deducting three levels for acceptance of responsibility, Pawlak’s total offense level was 29 with a criminal history category of IV, resulting in a Guidelines range of 121−151 months. The court varied downward by four levels and sentenced Pawlak to 105 months. The Sixth Circuit vacated, holding that the Supreme Court’s 2015 holding in Johnson v. United States, that the Armed Career Criminal Act’s “residual clause” is unconstitutionally vague, compels the same result for an identical “residual clause” in the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines. The court expressly overruled its prior decisions as no longer consistent with Supreme Court precedent. View "United States v. Pawlak" on Justia Law

Michigan charged and tried the named plaintiffs as adults for acts they committed while under the age of 18. Each received a conviction for first-degree murder and a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. In 2010, plaintiffs challenged the constitutionality of the Michigan statutory scheme that barred them from parole eligibility. Since then, the Supreme Court held in Miller v. Alabama (2012), “that mandatory life without parole for those under the age of 18 at the time of their crimes violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on ‘cruel and unusual punishments,’” Michigan amended its juvenile offender laws in light of Miller, but made some changes contingent upon either the Michigan Supreme Court or the U.S. Supreme Court announcing that Miller applied retroactively, and the U.S. Supreme Court held in Montgomery v. Louisiana (2016), that Miller’s prohibition on mandatory life without parole for juvenile offenders is retroactive. The district court held, in 2013, that Miller should apply retroactively and issued an injunction requiring compliance with Miller. The Sixth Circuit vacated and remanded for consideration of remedies in the context of the new legal landscape and to determine whether class certification is required to extend relief to non-plaintiffs. View "Hill v. Snyder" on Justia Law

Dubrule, a former medical doctor, was convicted of conspiracy to distribute controlled substances, 21 U.S.C. 846, and 44 counts of distributing controlled substances, 21 U.S.C. 841(a)(1). Kim, Dubrule’s wife and medical assistant, was convicted of conspiring with her husband. The district court sentenced Dubrule to 150 months’ imprisonment and Kim to 18 months’ imprisonment. The Sixth Circuit affirmed, rejecting Dubrule’s arguments that the district court erred by finding him competent to stand trial and proceed with sentencing and by failing to sua sponte order a competency hearing either before or during trial; that his pre-trial attorney and standby counsel at trial provided ineffective assistance by failing to request a competency evaluation; that the district court erred by holding that he had waived his insanity defense; and that his due process and Sixth Amendment rights were violated when the court, in making its competency determination, relied upon an expert opinion that misleadingly claimed to be “peer reviewed.” View "United States v. Dubrule" on Justia Law

Sixteen members of the Bergholz, Ohio, Amish community were convicted of hate crimes and obstruction-of-justice, stemming from a spate of hair-cutting and beard-shearing attacks that followed “shunnings” and a split in their community. In 2014, the Sixth Circuit reversed the hate crime convictions because the relevant jury instruction was inconsistent with an intervening Supreme Court decision. On remand, the government declined to re-try those charges, and the district court resentenced the defendants on the remaining convictions. The Sixth Circuit affirmed, noting that, in their second appeal, the defendants raised challenges that could have been, but were not, raised in the first appeal. The court also upheld the sentences: time served for eight defendants and terms of 43-129 months for the others. View "United States v. Mullet" on Justia Law

Bašić, a Balkan native, came to the U.S. in 1994 as a refugee to escape the civil war that was tearing Yugoslavia apart. She settled in Kentucky and became a naturalized citizen. She is now accused in Bosnia, one of Yugoslavia’s successor states, of crimes committed against ethnic Serbs during the war while Bašić was a member of the Croatian army. Bosnia asked the U.S. to extradite Bašić for trial. The Department of State filed a Complaint for Extradition in 2011. A Magistrate Judge certified the complaint, concluding that Bašić was extraditable under a 1902 treaty between the U.S. and the Kingdom of Serbia, 32 Stat. 1890. Direct appeal is not available in extradition proceedings, so Bašić filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. 2241. The Sixth Circuit affirmed denial, rejecting arguments that the Treaty prohibits extradition of U.S. citizens to Bosnia and that the Bosnian government failed to produce a warrant for Bašić’s arrest as required by the Treaty. View "Bašic v. Steck" on Justia Law

Bankston was charged wire fraud, mail fraud, bank fraud, money laundering, identity theft, and a false statement offense in connection with three separate fraudulent schemes. In each scheme, she unlawfully obtained the personal identification information of individuals and used it to defraud commercial banks and the state and federal government. Before trial, Bankston wrote a letter to the judge complaining of a disagreement with her attorney: Bankston wanted to present as a defense her theory that evidence recovered from her home had been planted by a federal agent. Based on the letter, Count 23 charged Bankston with making false statements in matters within the jurisdiction of the judiciary, 18 U.S.C. 1001. The Sixth Circuit vacated her Count 23 conviction and remanded for resentencing, affirming her other convictions, despite claims of insufficient evidence, judicial bias, prosecutorial misconduct, ineffective assistance, and invalid waiver of counsel. Bankston’s Count 23 conduct did not clearly constitute a crime: “judicial function exception” applies when the defendant was a party to a judicial proceeding, his statements were submitted to a judge, and his statements were made in that proceeding. View "United States v. Bankston" on Justia Law

Police arrested men suspected of committing armed robberies at Detroit-area stores. One confessed that the group had robbed nine stores in Michigan and Ohio in 2010-2011, supported by a shifting collection of 15 drivers and lookouts. He gave the FBI the cell phone numbers of other participants; the FBI reviewed his call records and obtained orders under the Stored Communications Act, 18 U.S.C. 2703(d), for release of records for 16 numbers, including “[a]ll subscriber information, toll records and call detail records including listed and unlisted numbers dialed or otherwise transmitted to and from" the phones for relevant dates and “cell site information for the target telephones at call origination and at call termination” to obtain evidence against Sanders, Carpenter and others. The government charged Carpenter with six, and Sanders with two, Hobbs Act counts, 18 U.S.C. 1951, and aiding the use or carriage of a firearm during a crime of violence, 18 U.S.C. 924(c), 1951(a). The records showed that each used his cellphone within one-half-to-two miles of several robberies while the robberies occurred. A jury convicted on all of the Hobbs Act counts and convicted Carpenter on all but one of the gun counts. The court sentenced Carpenter to 1,395 months’ and Sanders to 170 months’ imprisonment. The Sixth Circuit affirmed, rejecting a Fourth Amendment challenge. The content of a communication is protected by the Fourth Amendment; routing information necessary to convey it is not. The court distinguished between GPS tracking and the far less precise phone locational information. View "United States v. Sanders" on Justia Law

Walker served 19 years in federal prison for distributing cocaine and pointing a gun at the police. Upon his 2013 release, he began five years of supervised release. Walker was upset that his neighbor’s dog repeatedly defecated in his yard. He contacted his neighbor and the police, to no avail. One day, he asked his neighbor to clean up a particular mess. When the neighbor approached with a stick in hand, an argument ensued, culminating with Walker attacking with a machete. Walker cut his neighbor’s arm (requiring amputation), shattered the neighbor’s other elbow, slashed his head, and severed a nerve in his leg. Walker had no injuries, and there is no evidence that the neighbor had ever threatened him or raised the stick. State authorities charged Walker with attempted murder; federal authorities alleged violation of supervised release, 18 U.S.C. 3583(d). Walker admitted the violation. The court imposed the statutory maximum, five years in prison. The Sixth Circuit affirmed, rejecting Walker’s argument that he should have the benefit of Alabama’s self-defense law. Using a machete was not a reasonable response. While Walker was never disciplined in prison, even protecting a guard from an assault, had a job, had saved money, and was trying to be a productive member of society, a safe society cannot accept the behavior Walker exhibited. View "United States v. Walker" on Justia Law

Smith pled guilty to two counts of possessing firearms as a felon under 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(1), and to other federal crimes and was sentenced to 200 months in prison. Smith challenged the enhancement of his sentence under the enumerated-offenses clause of the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), under which a person who violates 18 U.S.C. 922(g) and has three previous convictions for a violent felony shall be imprisoned for a minimum of 15 years, 18 U.S.C. 924(e)(1). Under the ACCA’s enumerated-offenses clause, a “violent felony” includes a crime “punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year” and “is burglary, arson, or extortion, [or] involves [the] use of explosives.” Smith argued cited the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision, Johnson v. United States, invalidating a different ACCA clause, the residual clause, as unconstitutionally vague. That clause includes as a “violent felony” a crime that “otherwise involves conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another.” The Sixth Circuit rejected his argument. Limiting language in the Johnson opinion makes clear that its holding does not extend to the enumerated-offenses clause. The enumerated-offenses clause gives ordinary people fair notice of the conduct it punishes and does not invite arbitrary enforcement. View "United States v. Smith" on Justia Law